Doragon Odori
by PikaRox
Summary: Settling himself more comfortably on Maeko's shoulder, Karasu reflected on the blind girl. She was an odd one, that was to be sure...
1. The Slightly Confusing Chapter

Welcome to the world of Doragon Odori, my second fanfic ever. As with Kyouran Kakyoku, if you want to know what the title means, go to an online Romanized Japanese to English dictionary, as I've found that translation websites tend not to work. Also as with Kyouran Kakyoku, rated T just to be safe.

Again, Naruto does not belong to me. Duh.

* * *

She woke to birdsong, small yellow sploshes like musical notes flashing across the backs of her eyelids in time with the little bird's tune. She smiled and rolled over, fingers skimming the floor beside her mattress until they found the familiar shape of her hitai-ate. Tying it firmly in its usual place, she found an outfit – one of three outfits, all of them clones of each other – that was reasonably clean and changed quickly. Her shirt was brown, several shades lighter than her dark pants. Both were made out of thick, sturdy cloth; a habit she'd quickly formed while she lived in Iwagakure was to wear clothing that didn't tear easily. Iwagakure had a lot of jagged rocks, and she hated sewing with a passion. Pulling on her black ninja sandals and fingerless gloves, she rolled off the mattress and promptly whacked her head against the window sill.

Grumbling and rubbing the sore spot, she stood and walked around the perimeter of the room to the door, her right hand dragging along the wall, her other hand running through her longish white hair. As she twisted the doorknob and pulled the door open, she heard the light red rustle of Kurasu's wings.

"About time you got here," she groused as the crow landed on her shoulder.

Dull grey-brown patches appeared as he croaked, "Well, excuse me for wanting some free time."

She sighed. "Karasu, I just got here yesterday. I don't have a clue where anything is and even if I did I would still need help."

The crow shuffled his wings irritably. "I still wish you hadn't moved," he croaked. "At least back in Arashikawa you could ask someone else for help."

She chose not to reply, instead saying, "I need to find somewhere to eat breakfast; I don't have any food." She hadn't brought much of anything with her from Arashikawa – just a backpack with some clothes, enough food for the journey, and some money. Most of the clothes were still in her backpack, and the only other things in her one-room apartment were the mattress on the floor, a few basic appliances, and some empty cupboards.

The crow sighed. "I saw a ramen bar on the way over here. You still like ramen?"

With Karasu cawing grey-brown instructions in her left ear, she set off.

A while later, Karasu said "All right. Two more steps forward, and then stretch your arm out." She did so, and felt a wall in front of her. "One step left and duck your head before you walk forward. We're here."


	2. The Flashback Chapter

Karasu glanced around, bored, as Maeko ate quickly. The restaurant was busy – it had taken quite a bit of effort to guide her to an empty spot without walking straight into somebody – although she had bumped at least three. One or two people had looked at the pair oddly, and Karasu knew why – The Miyabi family members were the only ones who could understand him. Everyone else heard _craark_s and _caah_s instead of words.

Settling himself more comfortably on Maeko's shoulder, he reflected on the blind girl. She was an odd one, that was to be sure...

_~Flashback~_

_The little girl was less than a month old. Her mother wore an unreadable expression as she gazed at Maeko's glassy eyes._

"_So, that's it, then. She was born blind."_

_Her husband nodded. "I don't see a reason she shouldn't be treated normally, though. She shouldn't be any less capable of doing things just because she's blind. I'll bet that when she gets older half the time you won't even know she can't see."_

_Maeko's mother gave him a thankful little smile._

_~End Flashback~_

The crow's mind turned to Miyabi Maeko's other oddity, the one her family hadn't discovered until she'd turned eight. Her family had been trying to figure out a way for Maeko to see through Karasu's eyes, to give her a way to see if she needed to...

_~Flashback~_

_The jutsu, after much working and reworking, had been a success. As Karasu looked around, Maeko gasped and grinned with delight._

"_Is this what it's like to see?" she asked in an awed whisper._

"_Yes," her mother whispered, tears of joy in her eyes. "What do you think?" Karasu hopped forward and tilted his head so that Maeko could see her mother._

"_Oh, it's wonderful!" she touched the grass she was lying down in. "What color is this?"_

_Her father laughed. "That color's green."_

_Maeko giggled. "It's the same color as your voice." Her smile vanished as a shocked silence came crashing down. "What? What did I say?"_

_~End Flashback~_

After the jutsu had ended, both he and Maeko had suffered excruciating headaches – it seemed that the jutsu would have to be worked on a bit more.

Karasu doubted that Maeko's parents would have let her use the jutsu again anyway.

After the initial startled reactions, her parents had been puzzled. Consulting a medic-nin friend of theirs, the three of them had eventually discovered that Maeko had sound-color synesthesia – in other words, when she heard sounds, she saw colors. Once Maeko had learned the names of different colors, she'd told them what colors different sounds were; her father's voice was green, her mother's voice was purple, the sound of breaking glass was white, and so on.

By the time she'd turned nine, her parents had learned to forget about Maeko's condition most of the time, and with Karasu acting as her eyes, her father's prediction became true; most of the time, they could forget that their daughter was blind.

By the time she was ten, it was almost like she wasn't. If Karasu wasn't with her, she found her way around by following the sound (and color) of someone else's footsteps, although this did have the side effect of making her stumble over uneven places when Karasu didn't warn her they were there. Although she avoided the market, as the cacophony of sounds made her see colors that she described as "a fireworks show – except that the guys who made the fireworks were clearly drunk when they made the colors and they set off way too many at the same time", she could live her life without her parents leading her around.

Despite her blindness, she'd even become a ninja. Her parents had sent her and Karasu to Iwagakure when she was twelve, and, although it had taken her three tries, she had finally become a Genin. However, she had never advanced any farther, choosing to return to Arashikawa, her hometown.

And so it had remained, for several years, before Maeko had decided to move to Konohagakure...

Karasu twitched, feeling that he was being watched. Glancing around, he found the cause – a blond boy wearing orange was staring at them curiously. Karasu glared at him irritably. "I swear, Maeko, so many people stare at you that I should start charging admission," he commented.

The blind girl grinned, slurping the last of the ramen. "Who is it this time?" Karasu's keen black eyes noted that the boy's blue eyes widened a fraction when Maeko responded. Apparently seeing her respond to what sounded like normal crow noises surprised him.

"Just a kid. He's a Genin, I think; he's wearing a hitai-ate."

Maeko clicked her chopsticks together thoughtfully. The chatter of the other customers surrounded her in a deluge of color, distracting her for a moment. "Shall I ask him why he's staring?" she inquired, giving the boy a not-so-subtle hint.


	3. The First Chapter With A Canon Character

"Shall I ask him why he's staring?" The white-haired woman asked. Naruto jumped.

"Gomen," he apologized, looking away and wondering how she knew he was looking at her when she wore her hitai-ite over her eyes.

She waved away his apology. "S'fine, it happens a lot."

Naruto was about to respond when she stood up, paid for her ramen, and left with the crow on her shoulder cawing into her ear.

_Is that crow talking to her? _He thought. It would certainly explain how she wove her way through the crowd blindfolded without bumping into anybody...

Whoops. Check that. Naruto heard her stammer an apology as she ducked around a man she'd just run into.

"Shopping, training, or back home?" Maeko asked later, absently.

"Shopping," Karasu responded. "That way I won't have to lead you anywhere when you get hungry."

Maeko giggled. "Sooo, shopping list. Ramen, definitely. Is there anything you want?"

"You get whatever you want; I'll just sit here and be glad that all the moving stuff is out of the way. It wasn't such a hassle when we went to Iwagakure," Karasu complained.

Maeko shrugged. "Mom and dad took care of the paperwork when they sent us to Iwa. Speaking of which, there was also this issue," she added, tapping her Iwagakure hitai-ate, which now bore a long scratch through the middle.

As they approached the market, Maeko grew apprehensive. The sounds and bursts of color were faint, which meant the market was still a ways away, but she could tell that when they got closer it would be so loud and colorful that she would end up dizzy.

"Karasu?"

"Yes?"

"Is there another market? Like, a quieter one?"

Whatever reply Karasu was about to make was interrupted by a bright yellow "Ohayo!"

"It's that boy from the ramen bar," Karasu cawed.

Maeko heard the boy's footsteps as he caught up and stood in front of her. "Oi, you left before I could talk to you," he said.

"Gomen," she replied. "Did you want to talk to me?" The faint sounds of the market were still causing small bursts of color, but she could easily distinguish the boy's voice; the yellow was so vivid she was pretty sure she'd never have trouble identifying him.

"Well, yeah! I've never seen you before, you're an Iwa ninja-" -she didn't bother to object to the present-tense- "you're blindfolded for some reason, and you're apparently talking to a crow! I'm curious, you know!"

Maeko thought fast. "Tell you what. If you do me a favor, I'll answer whatever questions you want."

"Yeah?" Wow. He must be really curious, if he was going to agree without even asking what the favor was. She dug out her wallet.

"Go to the market and get me enough ramen to last a week. I haven't been here long enough to do any shopping."

He snatched the wallet from her outstretched hand, and she heard his footsteps before he paused. "Are you going to wait here, or...?"

Maeko sat down and waved him off. "I'll wait here."

A while later Maeko felt him press a bag and her wallet into her hand. She grinned. "Thanks."

There was a soft green rustle as he sat down beside her in the grass. "You promised to answer my questions, remember," he reminded her almost challengingly.

She shrugged. "You haven't asked any yet."

After a moment, he asked "What's your name?"

A reasonable first question. "Miyabi Maeko. And yours?"

"Uzumaki Naruto, believe it!" I sweatdropped, and he asked another question. "Where are you from?"

"I'm from a town called Arashikawa. You've probably never heard of it."

Karasu saw Naruto tapping his fingers, like he was thinking. "Then how come you've got an Iwa hitai-ate?"

"I moved there when I was twelve. Became a Genin."

"How old are you?"

He yelped when she smacked him. "Baka! It's not polite to ask a woman her age!"

"You said _any question_," he pouted.

She sighed. "Alright, then, here's your answer: older than you."

The conversation went back and forth for a few minutes, until Naruto finally asked the obvious question. "So, um, why are you blindfolded?"

Instead of answering in words, Maeko pushed her hitai-ate up, uncovering her eyes.

Naruto blinked uncomprehendingly for a moment. Maeko's eyes were brown, and should have looked perfectly normal, but there was something wrong with them. They were... Glassy. Clouded. They were fixed on nothing, almost as if...

Oh.

"You're blind?"

Maeko simply nodded and pulled her hitai-ate back down. "I've been blind since I was born. Just FYI, the last guy who felt sorry for me woke up hanging upside-down from a tree."

Naruto laughed and shifted his gaze to the crow perched on Maeko's head. "Okay, one more question. Did I actually see him talking to you at Ichiraku's?"

The white-haired woman tilted her head slightly in confusion. "I'm assuming you mean Karasu and the ramen bar you saw me at this morning? Yes, you did. Karasu is the guardian of the Miyabi family. Only those in the family can understand him." The crow cawed something, and hopped backward as Maeko swiped at him. "Karasu! Now that's just rude!"

Naruto had the feeling he'd just been insulted. When he opened his mouth, however, Maeko was already talking.

"Now, if you don't mind, I really should get going. And don't you have training to get to?"

At the mention of training, Naruto scrambled to his feet and ran off with a hasty "See ya!"

Laughing quietly to herself, Maeko stood, picked up the bag sitting beside her, and started walking.


End file.
